Biography

Dr. Tomás Pérez-Acle focuses his research on Computational Biology: applying knowledge from biology, mathematics, physics, and chemistry to develop computational models for studying various biological phenomena. He has published over 60 indexed articles (Q1), 3 book chapters, and has supervised 11 postgraduate and 10 undergraduate students. He has submitted 4 patent applications covering technologies in drug design and nanotechnology. He serves as an associate editor for PeerJ, PeerJ Computer Sciences, and Frontiers in Genetics, and reviews for high-impact journals such as PLoS One, PLoS Computational Biology, and Nature Communications.

He has led multiple research projects funded by national and international agencies, including ANID, FONDEF, CORFO, and funding from the ECU (FP-07), and the scientific research offices of the U.S. Air Force and Army (AFOSR and ARO, respectively). In 2005, he was nominated by the U.S. Department of State to participate, representing Chile, in the Global Dialogues on Emerging Science and Technologies (GDEST 2005), in Petrópolis, RJ, Brazil. In 2014, he was nominated by the International Cooperation Program (PCI) of CONICYT to participate in the scientific and technological mission to the INDO-Chile Workshop on Big Data, held in Goa, India. Since 2018, Dr. Pérez-Acle has been nominated as a regular member of the Chile-United States Council for Science, Technology, and Innovation, organized by the U.S. Embassy in Chile.

From 2011 to 2014, Dr. Pérez-Acle served as Executive Director of the National Laboratory for High-Performance Computing (NLHPC), Center for Mathematical Modeling (CMM), University of Chile. He has been part of the Evaluation Groups for Biology 2 and 3, the Inter and Transdisciplinary Research Group, and a member of the Advisory Panel for the Exploration Program of FONDECYT, also serving on evaluation panels for the FONDEF and CORFO programs. From 2013 to 2016, he served as a member of the Council of the EXPLORA program of CONICYT. From 2015 to 2018, Dr. Pérez-Acle served as executive secretary of the Ibero-American Society for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics (SoIBio), a society of which he is a founding member. Throughout 2020, he was a member of the COVID-19 Data Subcommittee formed by the Ministry of Science, Technology, Knowledge, and Innovation (MinCTCI), and during 2021, he was a member of the Public Interest Data Advisory Council formed by this Ministry, also serving on the Clouds and Datacenters Commission, formed by the Council for the Future.

Dr. Pérez-Acle is currently a Professor at the Faculty of Engineering and Technology at Universidad San Sebastián and Director of the BASAL Center for Science & Life, one of the National Centers for Scientific and Technological Research funded by ANID.